Jun 30
☆Bisexual Child & The Influence of Perceived Choice (Analysis)
If you had a bisexual child, would you encourage them to marry someone of the same-sex, opposite-sex, or either?
Annukka Lahti, 2021 (p. 90)
“Often, over the course of their lives, interviewees’ parents met their partners of different genders and came to accept and like them. However, it was striking in the data that even after the participants had lived in LGBTIQA+ culture for a long time, and had had partners of different genders,
in their family relationship assemblages, powerful positive affects such as happiness were repeatedly assembled to their relationships with cis men.
Some people are more supportive of marriage equality due to an understanding that sexuality is associated with genetics/DNA. From their perspective, if LG individuals don’t have a choice in who they love, then they are content with same-sex marriage.
However… if they felt that sexuality was a lifestyle decision they would be less supportive. In essence, they aren’t supportive of LG individuals’ right to be with the person they love; they’re just supportive of it because they believe that if it’s genetic then it can’t be helped.
One way to assess this is to ask people if they would be supportive of a bisexual child marrying either sex, the opposite-sex, or the same-sex. Bisexuals have a choice in their lover that monosexuals don’t. As such, people who only support marriage equality for LG individuals because they believe they have no choice in who they love may reveal themselves to be less open-minded than they purport when asked about bisexuals.
A controllable identity that is disfavored in the eyes of others tends to garner less acceptance than an uncontrollable identity (Menec & Perry, 1995; Morris & Osburn, 2016; Seacat et al., 2007; Weiner et al., 1988; Whitley, 1990).
Gluten Example
People have positive attitudes toward those eating gluten free due to celiac disease, but exceptionally negative attitudes toward people eating gluten free by choice (Moral Minorities — Cara MacInnis & Gordon Hodson, 2013). Eating gluten-free by choice is, by definition, a controllable identity.
Just as people have more positive attitudes towards those who are gluten-free for medical reasons, people who view homosexuality as innate/uncontrollable have more positive attitudes towards lesbians & gay men (Whitley, 1990).
➡️ However, viewing bisexuality as innate may not lead to similarly positive perceptions if perceivers feel that bisexuals have a choice to be in a same-sex or opposite-sex relationship. Thus, the same person who says they support marriage equality may be revealed to be less progressive than they purport to be if they, in fact, would prefer that a bisexual child marry someone of the opposite sex.
Question: If you had a Bisexual Child would you encourage them to marry someone of the same-sex, opposite-sex, or either?
Results → 🌈Lesbians/Gays (n=155; 96.8%) & bisexuals (n=435; 94.9%) overwhelmingly endorsed encouraging a bisexual child to marry someone of either sex, whereas 21.7% of heterosexuals indicated they’d encourage marrying someone of the opposite-sex, χ2(4, N = 1929) = 112.69, p<.001.
Ultimately, this suggests that some people’s support for marriage equality is ONLY because they believe it’s innate (no choice) as opposed to actually believing in equality or holding otherwise authentically egalitarian beliefs.
☆ Parents’ Acceptance of a Lesbian or Gay Child (George Gao & Pew Research, 2015)
“In a 1985 Los Angeles Times survey, ~89% of Americans said they would be upset if [a child came out as lesbian/gay], & just 9% said they wouldn’t be.
In a 2015 Pew Research Poll, ~57% said they would not be upset if they had a child come out as gay or lesbian.
[Regarding coming out,] “gay adults are more likely to have shared this information with their mothers (70% in the case of gay men, 67% in the case of lesbians) than with their fathers (53% gay men, 45% lesbians)” (George Gao & Pew Research, 2015).
School Outcomes of Kids with Same-Sex Parents — Deni Mazrekaj et al., 2020
An investigation of 1,204,692 children, of which 2,971 children (.25%) live with same-sex parents (2,786 lesbian couples and 185 gay male couples) found that children raised by same-sex parents from birth perform better than children raised by different-sex parents in both primary and secondary education.
For all children living with same-sex parents, the percentage of children who experienced parental separation rises to 54.86%. By contrast, 19.44% of children with different-sex parents experienced parental separation.
Similar to prior work (Aldén et al. 2017; Boertien and Bernardi 2019; Watkins 2018), children with same-sex parents enjoy significantly higher socioeconomic status than do children with different-sex parents. Their parents are more likely to be older, to earn more, to be well educated, and children with same-sex parents are more likely to have fewer siblings.
Higher Test Scores
If we only consider children raised by same-sex parents from birth, the coefficient increases significantly to .139 standard deviations. To place this large estimate in perspective, a synthesis of over 800 metaanalyses found that the average association of having a good teacher on student achievement is .32 standard deviations (Hattie, 2009). Thus, the .139 for children raised by same-sex parents from birth is close to half the average teacher association.
Prickett et al. (2015) found that same-sex parents spend more time with their children than do opposite-sex parents.
Andrea Carnaghi et al., 2020 — Gender-role Development of Children Raised by Gay-male and Heterosexual Parents
Masculinity in general and beliefs about male-gender roles are extremely sensitive to disconfirmation (Bosson and Michniewicz 2013; Glick et al. 2007), and gay men, more so than lesbian women, are believed to be at odds with such societal prescriptions, at least in some cultural contexts (Kite and Deaux 1987, 1990; Euleteri and Lingiardi, 2008).
Gay men are perceived as being at odds with their male-based gender-role descriptive and prescriptive norms (Glick et al. 2007; Hunt et al. 2016), and these beliefs also extend to the appraisal of gay-males as parents, who are frequently stereotyped as effeminate or more generally as nonmasculine (McLeod et al., 1999).
Sidenotes
Multiracial Politicians — Danielle Casarez Lemi, 2021
“Multiracial politicians may enjoy an advantage when appealing to voters completely outside of their racial parts. That is, multiracial candidates have an advantage over monoracial candidates in building coalitions with voters from non-coracial groups, but are disadvantaged when appealing to coracials with strong ethnoracial identities.
Multiracial candidates have the advantage of building coalitions with voters from other groups, but they are disadvantaged when appealing to co-racials with strong racial identities.
Multiracial candidates appear to have an advantage over monoracial candidates, particularly Black/White candidates, for fostering coalitions. This suggests an enduring multiracial advantage harkening back to the advantages of lighter skin for Black Americans (Hochschild and Weaver, 2007). Multiracial candidates whose backgrounds are higher in the racial order (Bonilla-Silva, 2004; Masuoka & Junn, 2013) — or those who are less Black (Yancey, 2003) — may be more electorally popular than Black candidates.
On the other hand, some multiracial candidates are penalized by their own racial groups, who may prefer candidates whose backgrounds are more prototypical. Although the discourse on diversity focuses on intergroup diversity, I contend that increasing intragroup diversity may lead to more internal conflicts that erupt in the candidacies of multiracial politicians.”
[Jarryd: In terms of electoral strategy, if a Blasian politician garners more votes from White voters (majority of voters) than monoracial Asian or Black politicians (comparably smaller voting populations), then any decrease in appeal among Asian & Black voters is worth it because it’s not like they’re suddenly going to change parties or something.]
APA
Can Researchers Show That Threat Assessment Stops Mass Shootings?
Threat Assessment Management is designed to identify warning signs among troubled students to prevent mass violence. It can be hard to measure its effectiveness, because a shooting that never happens can’t be counted. Psychologists discuss in a New Yorker article whether threat assessment can also be viewed as a way to get help to those who need it by providing resources when kids show warning signs of violent behavior. “Every kid who makes a threat is waving a red flag that says, ‘I’ve got a problem I don’t know how to solve,’” said Dewey Cornell, PhD, a forensic clinical psychologist who has written threat-assessment guidelines. “And every threat-assessment team is a problem-solving team.”
Don’t Referee Every Schoolyard Conflict. Help Kids Learn to Solve Them on Their Own.
Psychologists and other experts explain in a New York Times article why learning to resolve conflict is an important part of child development. They also discuss when it is necessary to intervene, such as in cases of bullying. “The biggest difference between ordinary peer conflict and bullying comes down to power,” such as a bigger or more popular child bullying a smaller or less popular child, said Saskia Ferrar, PhD, a psychologist at Montreal Children’s Hospital with expertise on adolescents and conflict resolution.
